12 Questions Congress Needs to Ask the Administration About the FBI's Abuse of National Security Letters

A report issued by the Department of Justice’s Inspector
General on March, 9, 2007 found wide-spread abuses of the DOJ’s authority to
issue National Security Letters when conducting an investigation. The IG-documented abuses make clear that
the NSL powers need to be restricted and raise 10 critically important questions
that Congress needs to have answered, such as:

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2. Who
has access to the information of innocent Americans’ after it is entered into
the databases identified by the Inspector General? What are the limits to how information
may be used?

3.
Why
is the FBI issuing so-called “exigent letters” that immediately request phone
call information – when there is no emergency – without any statutory authority
to do so?

4. How
much were the three telecommunications companies paid for their “contract” with
the government to turn over phone records absent a lawful request to do
so?

5.
Why
is the government issuing National Security Letters (NSLs) to conduct fishing
expeditions – or as the IG put it, to “access NSL information about parties two
or three steps removed from their subjects without determining if these contacts
reveal suspicious connections?”

6. What
databases of information did the FBI obtain when it accessed over 11,000 phone
numbers with only nine NSLs?

7.
Why
did only one terrorism (material support) prosecution result from the NSLs the
FBI used to gather private information on 143,074 people when NSLs are described
as the FBI’s “bread and butter” investigative technique?

8. Who
is going to be held responsible for the wholesale violation of American privacy
laws?

9.
As
high-ranking law enforcement officials, aren’t the FBI officials who committed
these offenses guilty of breaking the law, whether intentional or not?

10. In
light of how the FBI exceeded their authority to collect vast amounts of data on
innocent American citizens, why shouldn’t Congress limit their use to solely
investigating suspected terrorists?

11. How
much time and resources were wasted on collecting information on innocent people
that could have spent on proven, lawful intelligence activities, particularly in
light of the lone terrorism prosecution that resulted?

12. To
what extent did the NSL statute's gag provisions -- provisions that allow the FBI
to throw a blanket of secrecy over its use of NSLs -- contribute to the FBI's
ability to abuse the law? And was
secrecy truly warranted with respect to all 140,000 demands issued by the FBI,
or was the FBI using the gag provisions as a means of concealing abuse and
protecting the agency from public oversight?